I want to make a note that I have been exceptionally busy and haven't even turned the PS3 on this week or had a chance to update the thread, and for the delay I'm sorry. I'll be more available this weekend and I should have everything updated then, as well as hopefully do my match with Hypervial.

I got transferred at work and it began eating up tons of my time. Following that, my PS3 crashed, something that I have been fearing for a while that finally happened.

I've gotten a new PS3 and controller, and I'm getting back into AC slowly. However, I just simply do not have the time to manage the Arena, which was about a 5-10 hours a week commitment, plus another 5 hours a week minimum of PvP for me to keep my skills up.

I want to vet people to continue the arena in my stead, maybe as a group. I might create an Arena account and give passwords to 2-3 people who can be trusted to manage it maturely and safely so they can edit the main post. But comprehensive daily updates are just impossible. Likewise, I'm not able to practice nearly as much as usual so my own skills have suffered lately.

I'm still looking to set up a fight with hypervial and some of the other challengers, but god knows it's going to take some time to work myself back up to my peak performance.

Your PS3 has never crashed? I've lost count of how many times mine has crashed. From how it sounds you got a new PS3 so the old one died. Sorry.

I think you should devise a timetable and place it on this board if you haven't already done so. It may help with organising battles a bit better. It may give you time to train and improve your expectations. If you have time to make it though.

I'd like to make a proposition for continuing the Arena. If others like the following suggestions, I can re-open it under these rule alterations:

1. Ranking via Elo Ratings

I'd like to make the ranking value based on 2 Elo ratings between players. There is a Normal Score (low K factor) plus an Arena Score (high K factor). The K factors I would likely choose are 20 (normal) and 100 (Arena). These are large factors, primarily becauase we're using the sum of 2 Elo scores instead of one, so each match affects the total change by half. The K factor is the total amount of points up for grabs based on a win/loss.

The Normal Score is based on reported match results of casual battles. These results are reported by any two arena members, of any rank, as just a win/loss. The conditions are only that the players have to follow the arena rules (2 consecutive wins or best 3 of 5, loser picks map, time-outs do not count). Players can report up one match per day, with the same pairing up to once per week. So if Hela and I have a fight according to arena rules, and Hela wins 2 consecutive, he can report that as part of his normal report, but if I beat him the next day, it cannot be reported. I have to wait a week. The same players can only report their matchup once a week, to prevent abuse. In order to count, both players must confirm the results. In the event of a dispute, the results are just discarded but the once per day / week rule is still upheld.

The Arena Score is based on official Rank Challenges, and can be only done to a player above your rank. You can challenge anyone up to 10% of your Normal Elo points above you. If you have 2500 Normal Elo, then that's 250, (aka, 20% probability of winning) or the next rank above you, whichever is higher. This means that you can "farm" Normal matches to build up the ability to challenge higher in the official Arena. Arena Scores are based on official challenges and have a very high (100) K factor, meaning that their results dramatically influence total score.

If players have the same Elo score, the players are ranked in order of their Arena score, followed by their most recent score change, with seniority having higher ranks. So if player A is at 2500 (1000+1500) and another player ( B ) comes in and wins a match that puts him at 2500 (1500+1000), Player A will be above Player B. If Player C wins a match that puts him at 2500 (1000+1500) as well, but Player A had attained his value earlier, player A will be above Player C, who will be above Player B.

Tournament match and other Arena results may also be included in reported results depending on the rules of the tournament, and I'll notify when tournaments and competitions are eligible for either Normal or Arena scores.

2. Reporting and Results

Player Rankings will be kept in a Google Spreadsheet that will list all of the matches, their dates, and the resulting Elo scores, with a single spreadsheet for each player. The rankings will also be posted here. The format will be one spreadsheet per player, with all matches listed according to the Date, win/loss, and the scores before/after.

All results will be sent out via an email newsletter that members will be expected to subscribe to. There will be a single email account that all results will be posted to. It will be up to all of the users to email their results to that account, as well as subscribe to the newsletter. This takes a massive amount of work out for me, as all I have to do is send out newsletter results for Arena match notifications, and then read the emails to populate the spreadsheet. No more PSN messages, no more double/triple checking and editing the thread with all the dates, as the spreadsheet will take care of that. This should reduce my work from 30min-1 hour a day to a few minutes at day, tops, which gives the Arena room to grow.

Normal Arena results reported to the email account should be formatted like such:

For official Arena matches. Players will have the same 2 week deadline/grace period between having them, however, they will be part of the same time. This means that if you wait 2 weeks to fight, then you can be rechallenged the next day, but if you fight within 1 week, you have a week period where you cannot be challenged for an Arena match.

At any time (including right away) both players may elect to do best 3 out of 5 instead of 2 consecutive wins. If they do this, they start from that point and all previous matches fought during that Arena fight are invalidated. Once the decision is made, they cannot go back to the 2 consecutive format for that match.

4. Converting to the new format

All players who have not fought a match yet will be removed from the Arena. Old players will be given 2 weeks after a single PSN notification to reclaim their rank by notifying me via the email. Player wins and losses will be re-determined using all previous results as Arena Scores, with all members having a starting Elo score of 1000 and then populated thereafter.

Because of some uncertainty of the early matches, it might be hard to form scores for all of the players involved, once we hit May the matches came too fast and I didn't keep a separate log outside of the forum for results. I would want to include Skillbreaker semi finals (best 3 out of 5) matches as part of the initial baseline of normal matches.

That means all players will start with a Score of 2000 (1000 N + 1000 A).

5. Referees and Streaming

With this system, I can grant newsletter and spreadsheet duty to additional referees, as well as have them spectate other players matches.

I would also like to have a list of spectators who can be at Arena matches, especially if they can record the matches.

Does this sound like something we'd want to do? The way this is set up, we have the traditional "Only challenge above your rank" format along with a much more free "get as many matches as possible" format, a better ranking system than the old sorting algorithm (winner and loser switch places) format, and it's less work for me overall, so I can get back to kicking more ass and doing less paperwork.

Points of discussion:

1. Switch to email instead of PSN notifications. Will people pay attention?
2. Switch to Spreadsheet instead of forum post. Again, will people care?
3. What K-Factors to use? Should new entrants have higher K-Factors to get more properly ranked?
4. Should we include Draws? (Elo rating does allow for that)
5. How high should the official Challenge Cap be, is 10% too high?

6. Should we elect to re-start the Ranking, and not count the old arena matches?

For reference, using this type of system with Skillbreaker semi and finals results would produce the following:

2021: Helamasa (1021+1000, 3W 0L)

2019: Dissocation (1019+1000, 3W 1L)

2000: Kotiljonat (1000+1000, 1W 1L)

2000: Seigh (1000+1000, 1W, 1L

1980: MrSloth91 (980+1000, 0W 2L)

1980 Reiko_Haruka (980+1000, 0W 2L)

Because disso and Hela had a points difference when they fought, primarily due to Disso having more matches at the time, (Disso was at 1030, Hela was at 1010) hela winning is an "upset", therefore the reward to hela was 11 points rather than 10. The bigger the difference of points the players have going into it, the more the loser gains by beating the winner, causing the rankings to self-sort.

If after that, Say Reiko challenged Disso to an Arena match and won:

2030: Reiko_Haruka (980+1050, 2W 0L, 1W 0L)

1969: Dissocation (1019+950, 3W 0L, 0W 1L)

However, since Arena matches do not influence normal ranks (nor do they affect how high up you can challenge) Disso is still able to re-challenge Reiko. The points split for the Arena match is still +50/-50 because both players were untested in an arena setting.

Since the K factor for Arena matches is 100 instead of 20, it takes roughly 5x the normal matches to meet 1 arena match. Normal matches can happen at a much faster frequency though, 1 per day instead of 1 every 2 weeks.

This means that official Arena matches are the fast track to raising your rank, but grinding out many regular normal matches is the best way to protect your rank from sudden upsets as well as give you more mobility overall in the Arena.